


Twilight Crafts and Literature

by swordPrincess



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, but they live on the same planet, gradual friendship and then gradual romance, trolls are still trolls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-20 05:37:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swordPrincess/pseuds/swordPrincess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose Lalonde attends the prestigious co-species Skaia University to find her new roommate is Kanaya Maryam, a striking troll girl, despite trolls and humans normally functioning on different sleep schedules. She is introduced to the "Twilight Societies", co-species clubs that meet on school grounds at sunset. Along with Kanaya, she sets herself up to inadvertently discover that the school has a deep, dark secret, and then purposely tear it it all down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write a fic for Rose/Kanaya for awhile, since it's my only otp I have yet to write about before this. I also felt that for a popular pairing, they are marginalized to side pairing far too often in fic. So one day I was purposely trying to think of a plot line to use for them, and come up with this monster of an idea, so I'll be writing it in between continuing my other long AUs.

Rose Lalonde traveled back to her newly moved-in dorm room at Skaia University, the remainder of her tea from her parting supper with her mother in hand. The meal had been insisted upon, then Rose had insisted that she pay for her mother's food as well with her newly acquired meal card which became a struggle between them. Rose finally won on the basis that the amount of money they imposed upon Freshman was known to be far more than she could eat, but Rose suspected she'd find extra money in some letter or by some other means in the future.

She sighed as she pressed the elevator button to go up to her floor.

Skaia University had seemingly popped up from nowhere several years ago as the first co-species establishment of higher education. It stood out against all of the old, established human universities, as well as the newer outcropping of troll schools that had been built some years after they landed on Earth a few decades ago. It claimed to be a beacon of the future.

Not that it was anywhere near as integrated as that sounded.

Trolls were a nocturnal species by nature, and so their classes were held at night. Rose had noticed on her application that it asked what hours she preferred to study, as well as when she slept. They might as well have just asked species, she thought with some dark amusement, it was so obvious what it was really asking. So everyone's parents still slept well at night knowing their children were safely tucked away with their own kind.

No matter. That wasn't what drew Rose to the University in the first place. Rather, it's reputation for only accepting those at the very top of their class. How it had attracted such grade A teachers and staff so quickly, she could barely begin to guess, but the mystery was just another part of the allure.

She unlocked and opened her door only to be met with the extremely unexpected sight of a pretty girl with grey skin and horns.

Had she accidentally gotten the wrong room?

But the key had opened the door. And she only needed to glance to the side for a moment to see all of her things laid out still, her lavender sheets on the bed, her knitting out on the desk. Her gaze came back to the troll, raising an eyebrow.

"I suppose you are wondering if there was some sort of mistake," the troll enunciated each word clearly, giving a distinct impression, as if every word were capitalized.

Rose's expression turned from surprise to a wry sort of amusement. "Did you have some sort of trouble with the time of day section of your forms?" she spoke with masked derision. "I know reading simple words and checking the right box can be so difficult sometimes." She turned away from the girl to put her tea at her desk, barely giving her acknowledgement now.

Well, she couldn't really be an idiot or she wouldn't be here. But some people with high intelligence levels were dreadfully low on common sense and basic reasoning skills. Rose was thankfully in possession of all of her wits, at least by her own estimation.

"I had no such trouble," the troll girl responded with an edge of irritation. "I simply prefer the daylight and marked it as such on my application as well as my housing form. I realize this is unusual for my species, but there was no mistake. My name is Kanaya Maryam, by the way."

Kanaya worked her way back to Rose and a hand was proffered before her. Rose just looked at it a moment, then up to her face. She really was quite strikingly pretty. She had elegant, slender features, and her lips were covered in a jade lipstick.

Rose took her hand lightly. "Rose Lalonde." There was a glint in her eye like a huntress discovering her new prey.

Kanaya's eyes gleamed back, a brilliant jade the same as her lips and surrounded by yellow. Rose was nearly impressed, not many people held up to her, but then it may have been that the girl didn't quite know what she was in for yet.

Kanaya turned away now, however, collecting a single tube of lipstick from her desk and pocketing it smoothly. She then straightened up. "I think I'm going to go take a look at the societies now before it gets too busy in the hall."

"Societies?" Rose questioned her. It seemed an odd term to use at a University, evoking in her mind an image of classy ladies gathered for tea, although she doubted that's what it was.

Kanaya looked a bit smug at knowing more than Rose on the subject. "Yes, the societies," she explained. "They are the name for the co-species interest-based group meetings that are formed at this university. It's the official name, not mine. I believe the human ones are called 'clubs'."

Rose raised an eyebrow, not asking what the trolls called them. "How does that work with the differing sleep schedules? When do they meet?" she inquired.

"At the time that the sun is lowering itself over the horizon," Kanaya answered her, and if it weren't for it matching the nature of the girl's previous statements, Rose might have believed she was being deliberately obtuse and condescending.

"Sunset then," Rose stated more simply.

"Hmm..." Kanaya pondered, hand hovering over the doorknob before opening it. "I believe the relevant word used has more to do with the quality of light during that time period." Rose almost thought she might have caught her smirking just a bit.

"...Dusk?" she asked, just a bit late. Kanaya had already left. The only response was the click of the door as it shut.

Rose found herself to be mildly suspicious at Kanaya's expression on her way out. Of course, mild suspicion tended to be her initial reaction to many things, and that now included almost anything about her new roommate.

She looked around at the things that the troll hadn't quite finished putting away while she was unpacking. A few odds and ends. Some rather pretty dresses in bright colors were partly visible from an unzipped garment bag. Rose didn't claim to be an expert, having had no troll friends growing up her only knowledge came from things she'd read or seen on television or the internet. But at the same, this seemed rather unusual. Not just her daylight preference, but also her taste in colors and fashion seemed stark contrast against the image of trolls that was projected in all media outlets.

Rose gave a soft smile now, all alone in the room. The troll girl Kanaya seemed to be quite interesting after all.

Perhaps it would also be of interest to her to see what the deal was with these societies Kanaya spoke about. As far as Rose knew, the clubs hadn't even started up yet. They were just coming into the dorms and classes hadn't even begun. She hadn't heard anything about co-species societies, how had Kanaya?

She decided to make her way out of the dorm room again and ask around until she got directions to the hall where they were being presented. The first person she asked had just looked at her strangely at the question, but thankfully someone else had overheard who knew, even going as far as to give her directions so she didn't have to look the hall up on the map herself.

When she got there, she spied a banner hanging up from one side of the entrance to the other, big, bold letters announced what one would find set up inside.

"Twilight Societies," she read out loud. "...If only that word hadn't been completely ruined by absolutely terrible novels. But then, perhaps that's the joke."

"Ahem," Kanaya's voice startled Rose somewhat out of her thoughts, although it continued on-subject. "Perhaps you shouldn't judge things only by their trite, human versions," Kanaya told her, voice still nearly irritatingly precise. "I'll have you know the troll version is much more engaging. The kismesis between the two males really makes for a far better read than the admittedly terrible flushed plot line. She really would have been better off auspisticizing them, rather than sticking to her unhealthy red obsession, but perhaps that's just me."

Rose just stared at her. Did she really just admit to reading Twilight?

"You should really try some troll literature, Rose. It had quite more depth than the human equivalent," Kanaya continued. "Now, I shall be heading back to our dorm, as I have already signed up for all that I had an interest in joining."

"I don't know about how 'deep' any version of that particular novel series might be, but I'm sure I'd read all that might intrigue me," Rose called back. "I will see you later, Kanaya."

Kanaya raised a hand and made a slight waving motion with her fingers then dropped it again. Rose went under the sign and into the hall proper, scanning the society signs along the tables set up in a sort of semi-circle around the large room.

As she scanned she caught the sight of a very particular pair of shades that could only belong to one person, and that person happened to be the only one she had a chance of recognizing in this whole school. What an odd coincidence to find him right here. She headed toward the table he sat at and then leaned her hands on it, smirking.

"Hello, Dirk," she greeted. "Funny meeting you here."

Dirk Strider was the brother of a close friend of hers, and also the reason she'd heard of the school in the first place. There was some big deal over how he'd gotten accepted a couple of years ago even though it was supposedly as hard to get into as an Ivy League school, and although he was vastly intelligent, he didn't seem the sort to actually care about that kind of thing.

"Hey, Rose," he greeted in return, leaning back on his chair. "Glad to see you made it. Here to join a society or two?"

"Perhaps," Rose replied, stepping back away from the table to read his sign. "Crafts, is it?"

"Yeah, you know, like sewing and shit," he said evenly. "I'm the president."

Rose came back over the table, bending over somewhat and leaning in close. She spoke softly and under the guise of seriousness, "But isn't that sort of gay?"

She wondered if it was possible to actually get the feeling of being eyed from a gaze that was underneath shades or if her mind was just making it up.

"You know my huge, raging man-boner for sticking needles into things cannot be contained," he answered without shifting his tone. "But beyond the facetiousness of this conversation, if I were straight, I'd be fucking covered in chicks. Or rather, I am covered, but I lack the desire to take advantage of the situation. Regardless, on the subject of actual masculinity, it's not what you do, but how you do it that matters."

One side of Rose's mouth lifted higher, causing a slight dimple in her cheek. "And how do you do it, Dirk?"

His eyebrows raised and lowered once over his pointed glasses. "Wouldn't you like to know."

"Perhaps I shall find out," Rose mused, picking the pen up to sign the name sheet laid out on the table, only lowering her eyes from his face long enough to know she was writing on the line.

"You're joining, Rose?" His voice conveyed zero surprise despite the question. "I can't promise that all of my secrets will be laid out for you even if you do."

"I am," she said, giving him a more natural sort of smile this time. "I do suppose that knitting counts under your club description?"

He nodded at that and she released the pen back down to the table. He caught it as it started rolling.

"I shall see you around then," she said, waving off and examining the other tables again. Literature sounded like the only other one in her area of interest. As she headed toward it, a pretty troll girl in glasses and a blue dress touched the shoulder of the human currently in the seat behind the table. That girl got up and the troll replaced her, folding her arms neatly against the tabletop and beaming at the room.

When Rose reached the table, she beamed at her specifically. "Hello there!" she greeted enthusiastically, flashing white teeth, a couple of which looked incredibly sharp, behind cerulean lips. "Were you thinking of joining the Literature Society? I'm Aranea, society president."

She held out her hand for Rose to grasp, which she did after a moment's hesitation.

"We read literature by both troll and human authors, as decided and voted upon by the group and then discuss them in-depth at meetings," Aranea continued without waiting for Rose's answer, dropping her hand and holding out her sign-up sheet. "I'm also thinking this year of introducing the idea of reading some of members' creative fiction and discussing that as well, perhaps doing some readings in the meetings themselves, but I'll have to put that to vote. Do you think you might be interested in something like that...um...may I ask your name?"

"Rose," Rose replied, signing her name on the line the girl pointed to on the sheet with a blue-painted fingernail.

"Rose," the troll repeated. "Do you think you'd be interested in that, Rose?"

"Yes, in fact, I think I'd actually have some things I might want to share myself," she told her.

Aranea's smile widened. "Fantastic! I look forward to your support on the issue. I just think it would be a nice little extra something to really make our society that much more wonderful. Discussing our favorite fiction is all wonderful and all, but sharing stories with each other is simply the best, don't you think?"

Rose just nodded and pried herself away. She got the feeling that Miss Aranea, Literature Society president, might have some trouble with shutting her mouth sometimes. She wondered if perhaps this might be an issue as she walked out of the hall and back to her dorm room, where Kanaya had now finished her unpacking and was now settled on her bed with a book.

Rose noted that she was holding the book precisely in a way so that the title and author were obscured. She made an attempt to see without being excruciatingly obvious, but it resulting in nothing but the odd troll girl lifting her eyes off the page and onto Rose's face.

"Is there something that you want, Rose?" Kanaya asked knowingly.

"No. There. Is. Not," Rose replied with a smile, imitating and exaggerating Kanaya's way of speaking. She then flopped herself onto her own bed and pulled a Lovecraft novel out of the drawer she had set next to the bed earlier in the day. It also boasted a reading lamp on top of it, which she turned on and aimed toward her page.

Kanaya curiously went to bed before midnight, leaving Rose awake alone with only her reading lamp past 1am, when she finally shut it and went to bed herself.

It seemed college would prove to be an interesting experience, perhaps much more than anticipated.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can barely describe how sorry I am that it has taken me this long to get out a second chapter here. And it's not even as much as I originally planned, but it just worked out that the amount I finished sounded better ending where it was rather than half-assing a transition to where I actually wanted to end it. I'll push that to chapter 3 instead.
> 
> By the way, if it does take me long stretches of time like this to update, I haven't abandoned anything. It's just I have a lot of projects and my thoughts are often jumbled, so bear with me!
> 
> Part of me always just wants to jump into the exciting bits several chapters ahead, but I can't.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy.

When Rose awoke the next day the other bed was empty and made already. She was alone in the room. She had no idea what time Kanaya had woken as she'd slept soundly right through it. In any case, it was now approaching the afternoon. Classes didn't start until the day after, so Rose had afforded herself to sleep in.

When she had washed and dressed, adding the final touches to her makeup and the addition of a headband to her short hair, she headed out, deciding to explore the campus and acquaint herself with the buildings her classes would be held in.

The campus was quite pretty, beautiful even. Attention had been paid to the landscaping, sunlight streamed through trees and flowers bloomed along certain pathways. Rose allowed herself to stroll more slowly through and take it all in. A gentle breeze lifted the midday heat of summer's end.

She was able to find all of the buildings she needed to plus a small cafe that she spied a stray cat near. The cat did not look malnourished in the least and Rose thought it likely that it was fed by people on campus.

She squatted down several paces away from it. "Hello, kitty," she greeted, extending her arm out slowly toward it, palm up. "Come here. I'm not going to hurt you."

The cat looked at her curiously, but made no movement toward her. Its tail swished at the grass.

Rose looked around her to ascertain no one would catch her in a moment of embarrassment and then she meowed at the cat, beckoning again with her hand. It meowed back and padded cautiously toward her. She smiled and scratched its head after it had sniffed and then rubbed against her hand. The cat purred it content.

"Good kitty," she told it, stroking it a few more times before getting herself up again. Her stomach made a noise that told her to get some food for the time being, so she entered the cafe and ate before returning to her dorm. She had looked for the cat briefly when she exited after eating, but it was nowhere in sight.

The dorm room was still empty after her excursion. Curiosity got the better of her, and, slightly fighting a moral dilemma, Rose made her way over to Kanaya's side of the room. It wasn't like she was doing something as bad as reading someone's private journal, she convinced herself before opening a drawer enough to see the book Kanaya had been reading the other night. It had a jade bookmark in it with a tassel. She couldn't read the title, but it featured a light colored troll with a cheesy glow effect and fangs with their arms wrapped sensually around another, scantily-clad troll. The second troll's hair was pulled back and a line of cerulean dripped down their neck.

"Classy, Kanaya. Very classy," Rose said sarcastically to no one. She shut the drawer again and went to her own side and sat down in front of her computer. She found two messages in her email about the societies. Apparently they would all be doing short introductory meetings in shifts tonight, then spread out to various days afterward. She lodged the times given in her memory, then logged in to Pesterchum to see how her friends were doing.

But before long she found herself glancing toward Kanaya's drawer again.

That cover was so godawful.

But somehow enticing at the same time.

Like how one couldn't help but stare at a train wreck?

Yeah, like that.

Rose scuttled back over to the drawer and reopened it, pulling the book out this time. She started flipping through it, and despite the unreadable title, the text itself was in plain English as far as she could tell. Although, there was some odd language and some words that she was certain didn't mean what they normally meant, like "nook". She flipped back to the beginning, an odd sort of grin she was barely aware of growing on her face.

She was roughly twenty pages in when she was startled by a noise at the knob, jumping at the realization that she might get caught, shoving the book back in the drawer as quickly but carefully as she could and getting back to her side of the room just in time for the door to open, although she was rather suspiciously out of breath.

Kanaya looked at her silently for some moments and Rose looked back, focusing until she seemed to see nothing but Kanaya's eyes blinking slowly at her. Her hands gripped tightly at her skirt.

The spell was broken by Kanaya moving again and Rose became aware of the rest of her. Kanaya was wearing a flowing green and magenta affair and had a flower in her hair, slightly in front of one of her horns. Her lips were black today, but they had a sheen to them that told Rose she was still wearing lipstick even though it was their natural color. Kanaya's hand, fingernails painted to match her outfit, rested lightly on her drawer handle, as if pondering something, before sitting down at her computer and pointedly ignoring Rose.

Rose decided that she was aggressively not flustered about the situation. Her, reading a book that didn't contain elder gods or other creatures beyond the imaginings of mere mortals? Never! Despite her secret stash of wizard fiction that was a large amount of evidence to the contrary, as well as the fact that she'd signed up for a club to read all sorts of fiction, she thought this. If she were at any point possibly reading trashy troll vampire romance novels it was purely out of...scientific curiosity. Surely born from having such an eccentric scientist for a mother. Yes, that was exactly what it was.

Exactly.

Rose took her computer out of sleep mode and went through the motions of something, but what she was actually trying to do escaped her. Her thoughts were so jumbled they seemed like frightened animals, scurrying away from her when she attempted to grasp one.

Sighing, she closed back out of her internet browser. She stared at her wallpaper for a straight minute before getting herself up again and heading to the door.

"Going somewhere?" Kanaya's voice called after her, perched at her desk chair.

"A walk," Rose stated simply. Then, out of some deeply ingrained aversion toward simplicity, she added, "I find that motion can sometimes serve to settle one's complicated thoughts into cohesion, else they fly away like a feather on the wind."

Kanaya seemed neither amused by the unnecessary elaboration, nor impressed by the poetry. She nodded.

Rose left, leaning on the door for just a moment before walking away, taking the stairs down instead of the elevator. Her steps quickened in the stairwell, as if running where she wouldn't be seen would free her of the last fragments of negative feeling from what had just occurred. Like drops of liquid embarrassment.

She stopped fully at the door to the main floor and collected herself. Why did such a little thing affect her this way? Kanaya, in very little time, had managed the ability to get under her skin like very few could.

She let out a breath and opened the door, strolling at a more leisurely pace toward the exit and outside.

There were still hours to kill before the society meetings, which seemed to be timed around sunset. She somewhat wished she'd had the mind to bring a book along before leaving so rashly.

There was no turning back now, however, she'd look like a fool.

So she walked until her legs felt tired and her stomach once again complained to her, her thoughts full of could-have-beens. Hypotheticals for situations gone and contingencies for an unknowable future.


End file.
